Tag Archives: climate change

Summary: The heavy rains hitting Texas last May were record-breaking extreme weather evens. But were they natural (records routinely break as time passes) or the result — partially or mostly — the result of anthropogenic effects? Here an eminent climatologist gives a preliminary answer, based on solid evidence (not modeling). There is no visible trend to rainfall in Texas, but its distribution has changed — more concentrated in large storms.

“With the lack of a positive trend in monthly springtime precipitation, there is no direct observational evidence that the record-setting May 2015 statewide rainfall total in Texas had an anthropogenic component.”

From the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center.

The mainstream news media have become more cautious in their coverage of extreme weather, unlike their previous uncritical reporting of everything as climate change. For example, see this by USA Today: “Wild weather shifts in Texas spark concern about “new normal’.” And “Climate Change May Have Souped Up Record-Breaking Texas Deluge” by Elizabeth Harball and Scott Detrow at Scientific American on 27 May 2015 — “Deadly downpours flooded Texas and Oklahoma and may have been exacerbated by global warming.” The link to climate change is strongly implied, but not stated as definite. The text reports climate scientists’ uncertainty about attribution of events to climate change.

(1) Introduction

Texas received its all-time wettest month of rainfall in May 2015, with an average of 9.05″ (230 mm) across the state… The purpose of this talk is to put the extreme rainfall events in Texas in 2015 in a historical perspective and to consider the possible role of contributing factors, including anthropogenic climate change …

Summary: The headlines report almost nothing but bad news about climate change as journalists exaggerate much of the bad news and mute much of the good news. Here is an example of wonderful news — from China, the top source of global pollution growth — about another step in the world’s shift away from coal. It deserves attention.

Those horrific forecasts of our future climate describe different effects, but have a common source: the RCP8.5 scenario, worst of the four used in the IPCC’s AR5 report. It describes a future in which many things go wrong, especially rapid population growth and slow tech progress, so that coal become the major fuel of the late 21st century — as it was of the late 19th C.

The central government has ordered 13 provinces to suspend coal-fired power plant approvals in the current pipeline, and another 15 provinces to delay new construction of projects that have already been approved, according to media reports.

The government has also set up an on-going early warning mechanism to anticipate and discourage local decisions that may exacerbate coal power plant overcapacity in the future. Projecting to 2019, the government has issued a “red alert” for 28 provinces (in Chinese), asking local authorities to suspend approval and companies to reconsider investment.

By curbing the development of new coal power plants, the dominant source of fossil fuel electricity in China, the government aims to prevent destructive competition with renewables.

Summary: This powerful article by Matt Ridley strikes at the heart of public debate about the public policy response to climate change. First, he describes the obvious and massive imbalance in financial resources: the skeptics have a pittance compared to the alarmists (e.g., compare their websites, standard templates with amateur writers vs. beautiful custom work with pro writers). Second, he describes how the alarmists are slowly applying their superior institutional power to limit the range of allowable public speech about climate. For these and other reasons I predict that the skeptics will lose (details here).

By Matt Ridley
Excerpt from The Times on 25 April 2016
Posted with his generous permission

The editor of this newspaper received a private letter last week from Lord Krebs and 12 other members of the House of Lords expressing unhappiness with two articles by its environment correspondent. Conceding that The Times’s reporting of the Paris climate conference had been balanced and comprehensive, it denounced the two articles about studies by mainstream academics in the scientific literature, which provided less than alarming assessments of climate change.

Strangely, the letter was simultaneously leaked to The Guardian {who wrote about it on 21 April}. The episode gives a rare glimpse into the world of “climate change communications”, a branch of heavily funded spin-doctoring that is keen to shut down debate about the science of climate change.

Summary: The public policy debate about climate science shows the dysfunctional nature of the US media. It’s one reason why making effective public policy has become difficult or impossible. Here’s another example of how propaganda has contaminated the news reporting of this vital subject, looking at stories about a new study of our oceans.

Image courtesy Matthew Long, NCAR. It is freely available for media use.

To see how science becomes sensational propaganda let’s start by looking at the paper — “Finding forced trends in oceanic oxygen” by Matthew C. Long et al, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, February 2016. Ungated copy here. It is interesting and valuable research about climate dynamics. The abstract…

“In each case the story runs into big trouble if you do a bit of homework; if not completely wrong, it needs a lot of qualification. But the all-purpose response to anyone who raises questions is that she or he is a member of the establishment, personally corrupt, etc.. Ad hominem attacks aren’t a final line of defense, they’re argument #1.

“…It’s about an attitude, the sense that righteousness excuses you from the need for hard thinking and that any questioning of the righteous is treason …When you see Sanders supporters going over the top about “corporate whores” and such, you’re not seeing a mysterious intrusion of bad behavior into an idealistic movement; you’re seeing the intolerance that was always just under the surface of the movement, right from the start.”

He complains about unfair tactics of the Left, the same tactics that the Left’s climate activists have used to all who challenge their apocalyptic news stories — which go far beyond anything in the IPCC’s reports. He describes them quite accurately, showing (again) that although he is a brilliant economist, he is lacks self-awareness.

David McKinley (R- WV): “If it {Clean Power Plan} doesn’t have an impact on climate change around the world, why are we subjecting our hard-working taxpayers in the coal fields for something that has no benefit?”

He refers to estimates that CPP will produce a tiny (~1%) reduction in world CO2 emissions (although it will have a significant effect on other forms of US pollution). The Administrator does not deny this, and gives a curious justification for such an expensive and wide-reaching regulation: It’s marketing!

Gina McCarthy (Administrator, EPA): We see it as having had enormous benefit in showing domestic leadership as well as gathering support around the country for the agreement we reached in Paris.

Summary: The appropriate public policy response to climate change is one of the great issues of our time, driving one of the longest yet inconsequential debates in modern US history. Yet everything comes to an end, eventually. This post speculates what that end might mean for the activists and scientists on each side if they lose. The consequences of defeat might mar the lives of ten thousand people in America (more around the world), yet has been little discussed.

Are you now, or have ever been, a climate denier?

Burning of Anne Hendricks as a witch in 1571. Engraving by Jan Luyken (1685).

The US public policy debate about climate has run for 28 years, starting the clock from James Hansen’s famous Senate testimony. Although the results have been meager, I suspect it’s like a geological fault. Massive forces moving but locked together, with the stress accumulating year by year. People live on it, complacent since nothing has happened. Then …boom.

There are many possible intermediate outcomes, such as slow political and climate change over generations. We remember the exciting outcomes — ice ages and revolutions — but slow evolution is the most frequent outcome. But sometimes the extreme outcomes become unusually likely. I believe climate is one of them. The political debate has become a game in which nobody claims the pot. It grows to immense size as both sides bet more than they can afford to lose. Each confident of victory; neither prepares for possible ruin. It’s a commonplace in military history.

The outcome will result from a combination of weather and politics, contingent on random (or unpredictable) events. Whatever the outcome, the long-term fate of 21st century climate change might mock it. The good guys often lose in politics.

Here are guesses about some “tail outcomes”, two possible extreme outcomes that illustrate the stakes in this now deadlocked political debate. Either the climate science institutions — and climate scientists — win, or the skeptics win.